International Differences in Entrepreneurship.

• Position: Conferences

Joshua Lerner, NBER and Harvard Business School, and Antoinette Schoar, NBER and MIT, organized a conference on "International Differences in Entrepreneurship" that took place on February 1 and 2. These papers were discussed:

Camilo Mondragon Velez, International Finance Corporation, and Ximena Pena, Universidad de los Andes, "Business Ownership and Self-Employment in Developing Economies--the Colombian Case"

Discussant: Ramana Nanda, Harvard University

Claire Lelarge, French Ministry of Industry; David Sraer, INSEE; and David Thesmar, HEC Paris, "Entrepreneurship and Credit

Constraints: Evidence from a French Loan Guarantee Program"

Discussant: Shawn Cole, Harvard University

Rajkamal Iyer, University of Amsterdam, and Antoinette Schoar, "Are there Cultural Determinants of Entrepreneurship ?"

Discussant: Morten Sorensen, University of Chicago and NBER

Leora Klapper, The World Bank, and Raffi Amit and Mauro F. Guillen, University of Pennsylvania, "Entrepreneurship and Firm Formation across Countries"

Discussant: Laura Alfaro, Harvard University and NBER

Robert W. Fairlie, University of California, Santa Cruz; Julie Zissimopoulos, RAND Corporation; and Harry Krashinsky, University of Toronto, "The International Asian Business Success Story? A Comparison of Chinese, Indian, and Other Asian Businesses in the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom"

Discussant: William Kerr, Harvard University

Suresh De Mel, University of Peradeniya; David McKenzie, The World Bank; and Christopher Woodruff, University of California, San Diego, "Who are the Microenterprise Owners? Evidence from Sri Lanka on Tokman v. de Soto"

Discussant: Tavneet Suri, MIT and NBER

Yi Qian, Northwestern University, and Yasheng Huang, MIT, "Is Entrepreneurship Missing in Shanghai?"

Discussant: Randall Morck, University of Alberta and NBER

Silvia Ardagna, Harvard University, and Annamaria Lusardi, Dartmouth College and NBER, "Explaining International Differences in Entrepreneurship: The Role of Individual Characteristics and Regulatory Constraints"

Discussant: Boyan Jovanovic, New York University and NBER

Sendhil Mullainathan, MIT and NBER, and Philipp Schnabl, Harvard University, "Business Simplification in Peru"

Discussant: Asim Ijaz Khwaja, Harvard University

James A. Brander, Edward J. Egan, and Thomas F. Hellmann, University of British Columbia, "Government Sponsored Venture Capital in Canada: Effects on Value Creation, Competition, and Innovation"

Discussant: Scott Stern, Northwestern University and NBER

Simeon Djankov, The World Bank; Yingyi Qian and Gerard Roland, University of California, Berkeley; and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, CEFIR, "What Makes an Entrepreneur?"

Discussant: Paola Sapienza, Northwestern University and NBER

Velez and his co-author characterize entrepreneurship in developing economics through a case study for Colombia. They document self-employment and business ownership since the 1980s; the relative size of these groups within the labor force is stable across time, but they differ significantly in important observable dimensions, such as education and business sector. Next the authors study the motivations for becoming an entrepreneur. They analyze the transition into and out of potential forms of entrepreneurship by measuring the flows across occupations, and study the determinants...